Lee Bok Sun is planning to close her 28-year-old fruit store in Seoul for good. Many of her customers have switched to a new hypermarket owned by one of South Korea’s chaebol, the family-controlled business groups that dominate the economy. “My baby brother gave me the money to start this shop to thank me for […]
In China they are known as “princelings” — the privileged children of the revolutionary founders of the People’s Republic of China. And in the generational leadership change that just took place in Beijing, it could not have been clearer that having the right family bloodlines is among the most important attributes an ambitious cadre could possess. Of […]
Euro zone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund clinched agreement on a new debt target for Greece on Monday in a breakthrough towards releasing an urgently needed tranche of loans to the near-bankrupt economy, officials said. After nearly 10 hours of talks at their third meeting on the issue in as many weeks, Greece’s international lenders […]
Political turmoil in Egypt entered its fourth day Monday, after President Mohammed Morsi’s surprise power-grabbing decree galvanized the opposition and set off rounds of street violence, at a time when the nation needs unity to make difficult economic decisions. Egypt’s economy was already in trouble, with foreign reserves having fallen 40 percent since the uprising […]
Early in 2012, a small group of US congressmen looking for alternatives to the Obama administration’s AfPak policy made recommendations for two changes in the region. The first, that instead of fantasizing about incorporating the Taliban into the Afghan political system the United States ought to rearm the Northern Alliance, had been discussed previously. The […]
The diplomatic activities under the current Gaza cease-fire will test whether a quintet of leaders — each with his own domestic critics — can find a peaceful rather than a military solution to solve the Palestinian situation. The cease-fire language was direct but ambiguous: “Israel should stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip by land, sea […]
The conventional wisdom holds that India and Pakistan, which remain locked in conflict over everything from the disputed territory of Kashmir to the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, while pointing dozens of nuclear-armed missiles at each other, are not going to cut a permanent peace deal anytime soon. This year, however, the perennially feuding neighbors finally […]
When most people think of British-Russian relations, they imagine Bond films, iron curtains, Cambridge double agents, irradiated dissidents, and billionaire oligarchs who dress like Evelyn Waugh but behave like Tony Soprano and then sue each other in London courts. But there’s another element underwriting this not-so-special relationship. British elites, elected or otherwise, have grown highly susceptible […]
In July, when North Korea‘s state media identified Ri Jol Su as the wife of the country’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un, reporting the couple’s visit to an amusement park, the contrast with his father, Kim Jong Il, could not have been starker. State media reports and official accounts of the elder Kim’s activities and behavior never […]
Over the decades Turkey has dictated its Middle Eastern relations based on opportunities presented by shifts in the regional balance of power. In the early 1990s up until around 2006, Turkey was finely enmeshed in Western sentiments and policies. But beginning in 2006 it recognized a leadership vacuum in the Middle East and began attempting […]
